Author: VD

Astute readers may have noted that a certain blonde girl was talking a little smack about one of her rivals when she asked if the actual telephone aspect of dear, darling Treo was working. As it happens, it was not, thanks to a very annoying series of foul-ups by the retail outlet and PalmOne, who conspired to provide me with a replacement PDA phone that worked very well, except for the communications bit. The Treo happened to be blocked.

A series of telephone calls to tech support landed me in a vicious circle; by the time I spoke the first person I’d contacted to begin a THIRD CIRCLE, I was contemplating various illegal activities that probably would have landed me afoul of several aspects of the Patriot Act. There was, quite simply, no way I was going to return the Treo again, wait a month and hope that they didn’t manage to replicate their mistake.

Only then did I remember that I was a pirate by nature, intellectually opposed to most intellectual property law with millions of minds at my disposal via the Internet. Fifteen minutes, a five-meg download, two firmware upgrades and a reset, voila! Now I have a completely unblocked phone and I will certainly refrain from renewing my contract with the bureaucratic bastards when it runs out in a few months. I took great pleasure in calling their technical support and telling them precisely how I’d slashed through their Gordian Knot.

“Well, that might void your warranty with us, you know.”

“I know you’re saying you might not fix my phone if something doesn’t work. What I don’t know is how that’s any different from what you’ve been doing for the last two months.”

When the law is a ass, a man has a responsibility to go and kick it.

UPDATE II – I heard back from my friend in Paris, who says “non ne so nulla, mi spiace!”. In other words, she hasn’t heard anything about the purported library arson, and given the high literary circles in which she travels, she almost certainly would have.

My conclusion, then, is that this report is quite likely a gross exaggeration, if not a complete fabrication. However, that is only a partially-informed logical conclusion, not a fully-informed verdict.

I consider it to be relatively important to correct factual errors, as I have no sympathy for the ludicrous “fake but real” justification. That being said, I do not apologize for my default position of trusting other Internet sources until there is a reason to doubt them. Sometimes I will catch inaccuracies, other times I rely on other people to do so. It depends on the nature of the falsehood; I can spot a fraudulent CPI much better than fraud in the discovery of a new species of flower in Peru. It is downright ridiculous to expect any blogger to fact-check the links that forms the basis for his commentary; the beauty of the blogosphere is that it is self-correcting, based on the disparate knowledge possessed by each different blogger.

For example, Morgan mentioned that a mere 30 minutes of research might be sufficient to fact-check the link above, (as it happens, even a full day and a contact in Paris hasn’t been conclusive), but no one writing more than one post per day is ever going to waste their time on such superflous – and as I’ve intimated, redundant – activity. The difference between the blogs and the mainstream media is that blogs correct better, faster and without embarrassment.

Of course, if French Muslims aren’t burning books yet, it’s only because they haven’t attained an electoral majority. Just give them time….

When they say that Western secular society isn’t worth defending:

A girl of 14, appearing in court for a second drink-driving offence, threw a jug of water at magistrates, punched a solicitor and ran around screaming abuse and kicking furniture after hearing that she was going to be detained for four months….

Her outburst occurred when she returned to youth court at Newbury, Berks, to be dealt with for her second drink-driving offence, committed when still under a supervision order. On arrival she pelted waiting photographers with eggs and her mother, Nora, turned her bottom towards the cameras and said: “Go on. Film this”. She repeatedly shouted that she was “proud” of her daughter.

So, let’s revisit that assertion of morality by the atheists a few days ago. Do you think it is likely that:

a) the Blacks are a devout, churchgoing family who worship the Lord Jesus Christ?

and

b) there is no connection to the huge increase in this barbarian behavior and the transformation of Britain into a post-Christian nation?

I’ll be interested to see that famous secular rationalism address this puzzling conundrum. It never ceases to amaze me how supposedly rational secularists fail to see that removing the Christian component from Western civilization means a return to the same sort of barbarism that pervaded societies that we would not consider civilized.

Remember, theory is nice, but history and observation will trump it every time.

Now Mr. Bozell is offended by Comedy Central:

Speaking of cartoonishly overdone death scenes, let’s not ignore the season finale of “Drawn Together,” another vile “adult” late-night cartoon that airs right after “South Park,” in which cartoon characters from different eras and genres are thrown together in a house like a reality show. Predictably, the producers brag on the Comedy Central website that they’re doing the same humor they enjoyed in “tenth grade.”

The finale was a “clip show” of previous episodes, putting all of the most shocking cartoon sex and violence in one intense package. One clip mocked the “Veggie Tales” cartoon for Christian preschoolers. The cucumber character goes on a shooting rampage, killing nearly all the show’s major characters, shooting most of them bloodily in the head. Behind the killings, a laugh track howls.

Another clip features the “Veggie Fables” characters singing a song called “God Is Watching.” The lyrics predictably associate Christianity only with condemnation. The happy vegetables sing about how God watches you shower and touch yourself, and they then turn angry and promise, “Your flesh will burn, your bones will churn, your soul will be torn asunder. You wretched, heathen, heretic, burn in Hell! For eternity!”

I rather like the Veggie Tales, (in the background, that is to say, the music is much better than most kiddie schlock), but this sounds absolutely hilarious. It reminds me of the time that Big Chilly’s little brother’s school choir – public school, of course – had a concert, but changed the words of the song “God is Watching Us” to the very creepy, pedophilic “They are Watching Us”. The choral director couldn’t figure out why people in the audience kept cracking up.

Christians face enough genuine challenges in secular society without going out of their way to invent new ones. And vegetables singing about eternal damnation is funny, so just accept it and spend your energy figuring out how to get your kid out of the secular mind-warp facilities.

It is unseemly for Christians to adopt the victimization/protest model of their opponents. We have the Light on our side, there is no need to indulge in passive-aggressive Gramscian deception.

Tangential note: As a creator, what I find incredibly annoying about people such Hagelin and Bozell how that they’ll devote space infinitum to talking about eeeevil products that they dislike, but seldom bother to so much as mention Christian books, movies and games that might provide a worthwhile alternative. Ironically, the only way to ensure coverage in the Christian is to combine children or elements of the sacred with decapitation, sodomy or witchcraft.

Rebecca Hagelin wants to ban video games… again:

Arrested on suspicion of car theft, Moore was brought in for booking and ended up on a bloody rampage. He lunged at Officer Arnold Strickland, grabbed his gun and shot him twice. Officer James Crump, who responded to the sound of the gunfire, was shot three times. And before he ran outside with police car keys he snatched, Moore put five bullets in Dispatcher Ace Mealer. Was this the first time Moore had committed such a heinous crime? Yes and no.

Moore was a huge fan of a notorious video game called Grand Theft Auto. As the title suggests, the goal is to steal cars. If that’s all there was to the “game,” it would be bad enough, but it gets worse: The way to acquire and hold on to the cars is to kill the police officers who try to stop you. And the sick minds behind the game give you plenty of choices – shooting them with a rifle, cutting them up with a chainsaw, setting them on fire, decapitation.

If you shoot an officer, you get extra points for shooting him in the head. It’s no surprise, then, that all of Moore’s real-life victims had their heads blown off. According to court records, Moore spent hundreds of hours playing Grand Theft, which has been described as “a murder simulator.”

But this time, his victims weren’t a collection of animated pixels on a TV screen. They were flesh-and-blood human beings whose lives were snuffed out in seconds. They had families who continue to mourn their loss – such as Steve Strickland, Officer Strickland’s brother. Tomorrow, he will testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property. Chaired by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., the purpose of the hearing is to examine the constitutionality of state laws regulating the sale of ultra-violent video games to children. Three psychologists will testify about the potential link between playing violent video games and copycat violence, and whether the games contribute to aggressive behavior.

With the ever-expanding use of technology by our children, such hearings are critical. We must determine if Moore and other murderers like him are anomalies or if ultra-violent video games dangerously warp the psyches of our youth. Those tempted to scoff at the connection between video games and behavior should bear a couple of things in mind. First, video games are not passive or spectator media. While playing the game, teenage boys and young men – the largest users of video games – actually become the characters who cut up their victims with chainsaws, set them on fire, or chop off their heads.

The amusing thing is that this is absolutely nothing new. Remember how parents who bought Mortal Kombat pretended that they had no idea that a game with a title that means “fight to the death” could possibly be violent. And wait until Rebecca learns that you can – gasp – beat up women after hiring them for sex.

Heck, Big Chilly and I half-managed to convince Computer Gaming World that we were going to release Rape 3D back in 1994. Unfortunatly, Big Chilly pushed it too far when he started going on about how our next project would be “William S. Burroughs: the game”, which would be based on scoring smack, young men and playing William Tell with drug-addled women.

What is highly annoying is the way in which women simply won’t leave men alone to pursue their chosen forms of entertainment in peace. They’ve largely chased men away from television by turning it into a wasteland of stupid, soppy, male-denigrating slop; if it wasn’t for sports, I wouldn’t even bother to own a television. (Madden’s is better on a 40 square foot projection screen anyway.) Men, especially young men, like to blow things up and kill things, would you rather they blew off steam in a virtual world or in the real one?

Are violent video games a negative influence? You would think so, although the facts are that murder rates have dropped consistently as video games have become ever more popular and more realistic. (They’ve always been violent.) And while they’re demonstrably less damaging to society than divorce, can you imagine the collective hissy fit that would ensue if men called for a Congressional investigation of “Desperate Housewives”?

If we are to determine that anything should be banned from this incident, it’s quite obviously police guns. After all, if the dead police officers hadn’t been armed, Mr. Moore couldn’t have shot them. As for her insane points theory, perhaps poor dimwitted Rebecca should keep in mind that police officers often wear bulletproof vests, so if you want to kill them, it’s generally a good idea to shoot them in an unprotected area that will still prove fatal. An area such as, oh, I don’t know… the head?

David Frum worries about Jorge Bush:

My forebodings of a year ago seem to be taking on my reality every day: Immigration truly is emerging as an issue that can shatter the Republican party. The president is determined to thrust upon the party an amnesty/guestworker approach that is opposed by the overwhelming majority of the Republican rank-and-file. He has come to believe – and tells visitors to the White House – that party opposition to him is based on irrational fear, ignorance, and prejudice. (Just like Dubai! Or for that matter, Harriet Miers.)

If anything were calculated to solidify the perception that this administration scorns the values and concerns of the ordinary Republican – if anything were designed to discourage ordinary Republican from turning out in November 2006 – it is what this administration is doing now. At a moment when the president needs his maximum strength to see his foreign policy through to success, he is gambling everything on a wager he cannot win. His version of immigration reform can only pass Congress with Democratic votes, and there is zero possibiilty that the Democrats will help him – but every likelihood that they will egg him on to incite a Republican civil war on the issue that most bitterly divides the president’s party.

Well, of course he has to do something to infuriate his base! How is Hillary Clinton going to get elected without Dear Jorge shattering the Republican party for her? It would be a tragedy if she didn’t get to use all those neat new Patriot Act toys that he’s prepared for her.

Few things amuse me more than a Republican who is still desperately trying to hold onto their faith in the fundamental goodness of Jorge. They so desperately want to believe… but there’s two more years to go….

The barbarians are within the gates:

Since the riots of November 2005, we know that the French government is not able to protect the French citizens. Instead of taking legal action against criminals, the government rewarded rioters.

Today (march 22, 2006) we learn that this government has let 1,000 years of cultural and religious legacy to become smoke and ashes.

Barbarians and savages entered in the library of “l’Ecole des Chartes” (100,000 books) in the Sorbonne, and destroyed writings of abbeys of Île-de-France containing all the official documents since the middle age.

This is absolutely nauseating. But in addition to demonstrating the barbarism of those the diversity crowd considers the equal of Western Culture, it serves as an indication of why the elite, with their dreams of a boot in the face forever, need barbarians to do their dirty work. In order to build a static future, it is necessary to wipe out the memory of the dynamic past. What the rulers do not dare legislate, they can arrange for by proxy. Then, when the situation is completely out of control, they can step in and offer order.

And the fools will embrace those responsible as saviors.

UPDATE – some commenters on the site linked are saying that this is a fake and there was no burning of books at the library. I’ve just sent an email to a friend of mine who happens to be in Paris, so we should be able to discover the truth within a day or so. One reason for skepticism: the name of the library is “L’Ecole nationale des chartes” not “l’Ecole des Chartes”.

As long as we’re considering how migration changes the culture:

Thousands of immigration advocates marched through downtown Los Angeles in one of the largest demonstrations for any cause in recent U.S. history. More than 500,000 protesters – demanding that Congress abandon attempts to make illegal immigration a felony and to build more walls along the border – surprised police who estimated the crowd size using aerial photographs and other techniques, police Cmdr. Louis Gray Jr. said.

Wearing white T-shirts to symbolize peace, the demonstrators chanted “Mexico!” “USA!” and “Si se puede,” an old Mexican-American civil rights shout that means “Yes, we can.”

If they’re all right there, why not round them up and march them back home? The complete idiocy of the Bush administration can be summed up thusly: the American people can’t build a wall or expel 12 million illegal aliens from a country where they have complete authority, but they can forcibly change the culture and religion of 1,000 million Muslims. That sounds convincing to me, how about you?

The truth is that Jorge Bush is aiding and abetting a mass invasion of the United States. He is a traitor to his country and will eminently the deserve the impeachment he will face, (which will almost certainly be on different, less deserving grounds), should Republicans receive the electoral beating they have been begging for in November.

The amusing thing is that Republicans are in danger of losing Congress primarily because of their pursuit of so-called pragamatism. Leaders who attempt to lead by following the crowd never get anywhere.

Discuss, as always, amongst yourselves:

MIGRAZIONI
Umberto Eco
La Bustina Di Minerva, 1990

Martedi scorso, mentre tutti i giornali dedicavano numerosi articoli alle tensioni fiorentine, su La Repubblica appariva una vignetta di Bucchi: rappresentava due silhouette, un’Africa enorme e incombente, un’Italia minuscola: accanto, una Firenze che non era rappresentabile neppure con un puntino (e sotta c’era scritto “Dove vogliono piu polizia”). Sul Corriere della Sera si riassumeva la storia delle mutazioni climatiche sul nostro pianeta dal 4000 a.C. a oggi. E da questa rassegna emergeva che a mano a mano la fertilità o l’aridità di un continente provocavano immense migrazioni che hanno cambiato il volto del pianeta e creato le civiltà che oggi conosciamo o per esperienza diretto o per recostruzione storica.

Oggi, di fronte al cosiddetto problemi degli extracomunitari (grazioso eufemismo che, come è stato già notato, dovrebbe compredere anche gli svizzeri e i turisti texani), problema che interessa tutte le nazioni europee, continuiamo a ragionare come se ci trovassimo di fronte a un fenomeno di immigrazione. Si ha immigrazione quando alcune centinaia di migliaia di cittadini di un paese sovrappopolato vogliano andare a vivere in un altro paese (per esempio gli italiani in Australia). Ed è naturale che il paese ospitante debba regolare il flusso di immigrazione secondo le proprio capacità di accoglienza, come va da sè che abbia il diritto di arrestare o espellere gli immigrati che delinquono – così come d’altra parte ha il dovere di arrestare, se delinquono, sia i propri cittadini che i turisti ricchi che portano valuta pregiata.

Ma oggi, in Europa, non ci troviamo di fronte a un fenomeno di immigrazione. Ci troviamo di fronte a un fenomeno migratorio. Certo non ha l’aspetto violento e travolgente delle invasioni dei popoli germanici in Italia, Francia e Spagna, non ha la virulenza dell’espansione araba dopo l’Egira, non ha la lentezza di quei flussi imprecisi che hanno portato popoli scuri dall’Asia all’Oceania e forse alle Americhe, muovendosi sopra lingua di terra ormai sommerse. Ma è un altro capitolo della storia del pianeta che ha visto le civiltà formarsi e dissolversi sull’onda di grandi flussi migratori, prima dall’Ovest verso l’Est (ma ne sappiamo pochissimo), poi dall’Est verso l’Ovest iniziando con un movimento millenario dalle sorgenti dell’Indo alle Colonne d’Ercole, e poi in quattro secoli dalle Colonne d’Ercole alle California e alla Terra del Fuoco.

Ora la migrazione, inavvertibile perche assume l’aspetto di un viaggio in aereo e di una sosta all’ufficio stranieri della questura, o dello sbarco clandestino, avviene da un Sud sempre più arido e affamato verso il Nord. Sembra una immigrazione, ma è una migrazione, è un evento storico di portata incalcolabile, non avviene per transito di orde che non lasciano più crescer l’erba dove sono passati i loro cavali, ma a grappoli discreti e sottomessi, e pero non prenderà secoli o millenni, ma decenni. È come tutte le grandi migrazioni avrà come risultato finale un riassetto etnico delle terre di destinazione, un inesorabile cambiamento dei costumi, una inarrestabile ibridazione che mutera statisticamente il colore della pelle, dei capelli, degli occhi delle poplazioni, cosi come non molti normanni hanno installato in Sicilia dei tipi umani biondi e con gli occhi azzurri.

Le grandi migrazioni, almeno in periodo storico, sono temute: dapprincipio si tenta di evitarle, gli imperatori romani erigono un vallum qua e uno là, mandano le quadrate legioni in avanti per sottomettere gli intrusi che avanzano; poi vengono a patti e disciplinano le prime installazioni, quindi allargano la cittadinanza romana a tutti i sudditi dell’impero, ma alla fine sulle rovine della romanita si formano i cosiddetti regni romano-barbarici che sono l’orgine dei nostri paesi europei, delle lingue che oggi orgogliosamente parliamo, delle nostre istituzioni politiche e sociali. Quando sulle autostrade lombarde troviamo località che si chiamano italianamente Usmate, Biandrate, abbiamo dimenticato che sono desinenze longobarde. D’altra parte, da dove venivano quei sorrisi etruschi che ritroviamo ancora su tanti volti dell’Italia centrale?

Le grande migrazioni non si arrestano. Ci si prepara semplicimente a vivere una nuova stagione della cultura afroeuropea.

Last Tuesday, while all the newspapers were dedicating numerous articles to the tense events in Florence, there appeared in La Repubblica a cartoon by Bucchi: it showed two silhouettes, an enormous Africa looming over a miniscule Italy; next to it was a Florence that was represented only by a small dot. The caption was: “Where do we want more police?” Meanwhile, the Corriere della Sera summed up the story of the climactic changes on our planet over the last six thousand years. From this review it emerged that the fertility or the aridity of a continent inspired vast migrations that changed the face of the planet and created the civilizations that today we know, experience directly or study through history.

Today, with regards to the so-called problems of the “foreigners” (a gracious euphemism that, as has already been noted, must also include the Swiss and the tourists from Texas), an issue that is of interest to all of the nations of Europe, we continue to reason as if we find ourself facing a phenomenon of immigration. One has immigration when some hundreds of thousands of citizens of one overpopulated country want to go to live in another country, (for example, the Italians in Australia). And it is natural that the hosting country must regulate the flow of immigration according to its ability to incorporate them, which is why it has the right to arrest or expel those immigrants that prove criminal, just as it has to arrest its own criminal citizens who rob the rich tourists carrying their precious valuables.

But today, in Europe, we do not find ourselves facing a phenomenon of immigration. We find ourselves facing a phenomenon of migration. To be sure, it does not have the violent and sweeping aspect of the Germanic invasions in Italy, France and Spain, it does not have the virulence of the Arab expansions following the Hegira, nor the slowness of the imprecise flows that carried the dark peoples from Asia to Polynesia and perhaps to America. But it is another chapter in the story of the planet that has seen civilizations form and dissolve on the waves of the great migratory flows, first from the West to the East (but we know very little about that), after from the East to the West beginning with the millennial movement of the surge from the Indus to the Pillars of Hercules, (the straights of Gibraltar), and afterwards in the fourth century from the Pillars of Hercules to California and Tierra del Fuego, (Argentina and Patagonia).

Now the migration, unnoticed because it comes in the guise of an airplane trip and a stop at the immigration office at the police headquarters, or perhaps by a clandestine boat, comes to the North from an arid and hungry South. It feels like an immigration, but it is a migration, a historic event of incalcuable scope. They do not travel in such a horde that the grass will no longer grow where their horses have trampled, but in discrete clusters that attract little notice, nevertheless, the process will not take centuries or millenia but decades. And like all the great migrations, it will finally result in a rearrangement of the ethnicity of the land of their destination, an inexorable change of costumes, an unarrestable hybridization that noticeably mutates the color of the skin, the hair and the eyes of the population, as even a small number of Normans left behind their blond hair and blue eyes in Sicily.

The great migrations, at least in historic periods, were feared: at first they tried to avoid them, the Roman emperors erected one rampart here and another on
e there, they sent the legions ahead to defeat the advancing intruders, after they came to bargain and discipline the first settlements, therefore offering Roman citizenship to all the subjects of the Empire, but in the end, the ruin of the Romans formed the so-called romano-barbarian kingdoms that were the origins of our European countries, of the languages that we jealously speak today, of our political and social institutions. When on the Lombardian highway, we find places that we call, in Italian fashion names like Usmate or Biandrate, we have forgotten that they were descendants of the Longobards. On the other hand, from where do we get those Etruscan Smiles we find so often in central Italy?

The great migrations cannot be stopped. We simply must prepare ourselves to live in a new season of Afro-European culture.

Tpaine summarizes Plato in an attempt to disprove the Divine Command theory of morality:

(1) If divine command theory is true then either (i) morally good acts are willed by God because they are morally good, or (ii) morally good acts are morally good because they are willed by God.
(2) If (i) morally good acts are willed by God because they are morally good, then they are morally good independent of God’s will.
(3) It is not the case that morally good acts are morally good independent of God’s will.
Therefore:
(4) It is not the case that (i) morally good acts are willed by God because they are morally good.
(5) If (ii) morally good acts are morally good because they are willed by God, then there is no reason either to care about God’s moral goodness or to worship him.
(6) There are reasons both to care about God’s moral goodness and to worship him.
Therefore:
(7) It is not the case that (ii) morally good acts are morally good because they are willed by God.
Therefore:
(8) Divine command theory is false.

The Bible clearly states on numerous occasions that (ii) is the Christian viewpoint. However, point (5) “If (ii) morally good acts are morally good because they are willed by God, then there is no reason either to care about God’s moral goodness or to worship him” is half false.

It is true that there is no reason for the Christian to concern himself with the question of God’s moral goodness, as God makes clear when speaking from the whirlwind to Job, and as both Jesus Christ and Paul teach, Man is incapable of understanding, much less judging, God. However, there are a plethora of reasons to worship God nevertheless, thus demonstrating the flaw in Plato’s argument, (or at least Tpaine’s summary of it):

1. Gratitude for His gift of free will. He created us and set us free to reject Him if we so choose.
2. Fear of His almighty power.
3. Respect for His awesome majesty.
4. Desire for the eternal life He promises those who follow His Son.
5. Protection against the powers and authorities of a fallen world.
6. Understanding that following His commands are of material benefit to us now.
7. Love for the love – insofar as we understand it within our limits – He has shown us in our lives.

Ergo, there is no conflict between (5) and (6) and the conclusions in (7) and (8) fall apart. Care to attempt a counter-refutation or would you prefer to try a different tact?